“The unique thing about Ads On Hold, when we first came on board, we thought, well, it’s a small company, probably won’t be around in the next three to four years, but they seem to have good services, let’s give them a shot.”

Macuga was pleasantly surprised, though: “It was excellent service, and longevity is important to us. It’s turned out to be more of a partnership than just a client relationship.” Longevity indeed, as the company has been clients of Advertel for over 20 years now. As Macuga said, “You don’t stay with someone for over 20 years and not have a partnership with them.”

“When we started out we thought it was going to be a one-time deal, but the service, the creativity on our phone messages,” kept them with the provider, Macuga said. “They always came up with something a little different, something to help us out in a situation. They would listen to what we were doing and come back to us and say hey, you guys ought to try this. That being innovative is important. You can’t just sit back and answer the phone one simple way, and our customers enjoy it. They tell us they don’t mind hanging on for a few seconds.”

Advertel provided the dealership with on hold analytics, which impressed Macuga. “You talk to some companies, and they say we can do this or that for you, but someone who can lay it out and show us which direction we should be going, who’s got the data, it was very impressive.”

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.